I am not one to encourage many social programs, but John is right, there are people who can not work even if they wanted to and they must be taken care of. In fact it is a crying shame that the people that really deserve a helping hand are forced to live a sub-standard life because of the abuses of the system. I worked in Manhattan for many years and daily I saw young men who were able to work sitting on the steps of apartment complexes drinking and selling drugs on our dime ! This is the crap that has to stop.

All receipients should be drug tested on a regular basis, fingerprinted to make sure they are not registering for aid in more than one county or under fake ID's, job training should be mandatory, and in the mean time you should have to do work for the city, county, or state, unless of course there is a medical reason you can not, and this is just a start !!!!

Again John is right, when I was younger I was far more hard core than I am now. Age tends to temper oneself and through experience you realize that not everything is black and white. It is very easy for me to weigh judgment on people, because of the extensive amount of taxes I am required to pay, but I try to be balanced in my judgement.

Unless someone has absolutly no family left, there is no excuse for welfare. Orphans have aunts, uncles, grandparents who should step up. If someone never had children and their parents and siblings are gone, perhaps they need assistance. There's just too many instances when the state ends up taking over because families abdicate their responsibilities towards each other.

For all the people who supposedly can't work, I doubt there's any voracity to 90% of the claims. Perhaps they could provide transportation or child care? They could answer phones or proof read something. There are many kinds of jobs.

If, in the rare instance, there really is someone who cannot do one single thing of value, well then what are they doing here anyway? Were they injured? Are they ill? If that's the case then there should be a system in which they could have medical care, food and shelter. Notice I didn't say money for those things. They should be provided but there should be no ability for them to trade the value of these things for other stuff (like people do with food stamps, free medical care and housing stipends).

People receiving welfare should have to do labor to for the city to repay it. The wheelchair bound would have to make potholders to repay their debt to society. Quads will have to write physics books like Stephen j Hawking.

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